The Build-Up of U.S. Extraterritorial Penal Power: Extradition and the Making of Bureaucratic Infrastructure (1960-1989)

• In Event: International and Comparative Perspectives on Punishment, Social Control, and Crime

Abstract

This paper explains how U.S. extraterritorial penal power became a workable and increasingly legitimate domain of state action by tracing the transformation of extradition from a diplomatic instrument into a penal practice. Research on penal change tends to assume a bounded domestic arena, while work on penal transnationalism has emphasized diffusion and convergence across states. I focus instead on penal extraterritoriality, situations in which U.S. authorities pursue custody and prosecution across borders through explicit jurisdictional claims and practices. Using multi-archival research and three original datasets mapping congressional hearings, bills, and treaties from 1960 to 1989, I trace the slower build-out of legal and organizational routines that made cross-border custody more predictable. I identify two linked shifts. First, high-visibility crises around aircraft hijacking made custody failures politically salient and pushed extradition onto the congressional agenda. Second, narcotics enforcement and related financial investigations supplied the organizational work that converted symbolic commitments into durable capacity. The result was a transterritorial infrastructure, an outward extension of domestic penal work through liaison practices, case-building routines, and specialized offices abroad that repeatedly translated indictments into custody. This account reframes extraterritorial enforcement as a cumulative bureaucratic accomplishment rather than an episodic departure from ordinary criminal justice.

Author

• Andrea Beltran-Lizarazo, Boston University